HTC One M8 Review : Luxurious Flagship Smartphone by HTC

Here’s the HTC One M8 review, an upgrade to last year’s HTC One. It comes with even better metal design, louder BoomSound speakers, better processing and a larger battery. Is it worth an upgrade? Let’s find out!

It comes with a beautiful unibody design and premium build quality. The top of the device has an IR blaster and the power button. The microUSB port and headphone jack are placed on the bottom of the device. The microSD card slot and the volume rockers are on the right side. A nano SIM card slot is on the left. Front houses the screen, BoomSound 2 stereo speakers, the front facing camera and a bunch of sensors.

HTC One M8 Review : Luxurious Flagship Smartphone by HTC

The quality of the buttons is very good but the power button should have been on the side of the device as it is hard to reach the button each and every time you want to lock or unlock the screen. But there is an option using which, you can double tap on the display to turn the screen on. In spite of the larger size, the One M8 feels better while handling compared to last year’s HTC One.

It comes in 3 colours, gunmetal grey, glacial silver and amber gold. There is no other phone which looks this premium, may be other than the iPhone 5S. If you want your phone to be a looker, this the device to get.

The 5 inch full HD screen looks absolutely stunning. There are no issues in brightness, contrast, black levels or viewing angles. The touch response as well as the accuracy is great, beating even the iPhone 5S which was previously considered to be the best. Content on the screen is visible even in broad daylight. All in all, this screen is one of the best out there.

Although we weren’t able to test the loudspeakers agains the one on the HTC One, we can tell you that these are one of the best sounding speakers in smartphones. We are not talking about loudness here. The richness of sound that you get in the One M8 is unmatched by any other smartphone that we’ve tested so far.

HTC One M8 Review : Luxurious Flagship Smartphone by HTC

Powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor and 2 GB of RAM, the device feels very fast in normal day to day tasks as well as heavy tasks like heavy gaming or even screen mirroring. The HTC Sense 6 UI is one of most polished Android experiences that we’ve had. There are enough customization options. BlinkFeed news reader can finally be turned off, no longer a hindrance to people who don’t want to use it.

HTC has retained the 4MP UltraPixel camera but removed the OIS unit. Additionally, there’s another camera and HTC calls it a depth sensor. It is used to apply bokeh effect to the images shot, commonly known as back ground defocus. Sure, it is fast but HTC still needs to iron out some issues in UFocus where things which should be in focus get blurred out sometimes. Quality wise, the images are decent enough but not anywhere close to the likes of Galaxy S5, Xperia Z2 or Lumia 1520. Even though HTC has missed out on 4K video recording, we feel that it does not matter much because people still don’t own 4K screens to enjoy those UHD videos. And recording in 4K means more storage needs as well.

Battery life has improved a lot when compared to the previous version. It easily lasts a day with more than 4 and half hours of active screen usage. If you are not a heavy user, the HTC One M8 will last 2 days on a single charge.

Price at around 49,000, it is the costliest flagship smartphone as of now. If you do not care much about how many megapixels your images are of, HTC One M8 is a great device to own. It feels ultra premium, has a great screen and excellent loudspeakers. It comes with a flawless screen and long battery life. If you have the money to spend, go with the HTC One M8.